Staring Into The Heart of Darkness

I was talking with a lady today about various things and the conversation drifted along to where we broached the subject of life changing events. The way she put it went something like this: "People don't fundamentally change until they've truly stared into the heart of darkness." Now that's seriously paraphrased but that's basically what it boils down to, staring into the heart of darkness.

What this means is that for most people, until some catastrophic event occurs that is basically what amounts to being a near death experience for us or someone we care deeply about, we never really look at ourselves, and so don't truly know the stuff of which we are made. Sadly it's really only those types of events that forces us to look deeper into ourselves than ever before, to take stock of who we are and what we have done with our lives. To see all our faults for what they truly are: Those things in ourselves which prevent us from fulfilling our potential as good and decent members of the human race.

It's only during, and maybe shortly after, this kind of experience that the concept of staring into the heart of darkness comes into play. You see, we all have a dark side which we are all able to easily ignore, and there have been points in our life that we've managed to forget across the years in our daily living where we have let our dark side "convince" us that what we knew to be not quite right was "acceptable", and so went ahead and did that something that wasn't really acceptable regardless.

Some people have these drastic and immediate moments of clarity and realize that they must be a better person all around and the change in them is remarkable. Others miss it entirely.

At some point in time we all will have at least one of these moments. Some people will have this experience a few times. We can only hope that when those moments come we take notice of the darkness in our own lives and then adjust what we feel, think and do to better ourselves and the lives of those around us.

Democracy

Did you know that 75 to 80 percent of the residents of the United States of America believe that we live in a democracy?

Really, they do. And they're stunned to find out that they don't. I love this part because it shows them how much they really do still have to learn about things that they've taken for granted for so long. I tell them that the answer lies in a simple pledge they all learned as a child (well, the ones that were born and raise here anyway).

They still don't get it when I give the clue "pledge" so I tell them the "Pledge of Allegiance" has the answer. It's amazing how many people say "but it doesn't say democracy in there". And they're right, it doesn't.

Does anyone know what we do live in? It's very simple. We live in a "republic" More accurately we live in a Constitutional Republic. Need a definition? Click here and read.

There's another question I like to ask: Do you have a constitutional right to vote? The correct answer is "No".

That's right, no. You do not have a constitutional right to vote. Nowhere in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or any of the other amendments to the Constitution are you given the right to vote.

This simple bit of knowledge sheds light on the reason why when there is a presidential election, the winner of the election can lose the popular vote. There's more, so keep reading.

So if you don't have a constitutional right to vote, then why do we vote you ask? Well, that's because your voting rights come at the state level. The state you live in gives you the right to vote (as long as you register first) and practices democracy in all the elections. Democracy means that the winners of all elections and votes are determined by the totals of the popular vote.

When you vote in your state for a presidential candidate, you're not actually voting directly for that candidate to become the president. Instead you are telling the state who you want the president to be. Once the voting is completed, the state allocates Electors. For the most part the winner of that state's Elector votes is the the state level popular vote winner, and that my not be who you wanted.

This method of election for the President uses a process called the Electoral College which is defined in the Constitution. Again, click here and here for more information. Each state gets a set amount of electoral votes based upon the total of the count of senators and representatives that represent the state in Congress in Washington DC.

Many people want to do away with the electoral college but in all honesty we still need it, and here's why: The majority of the population of this country resides in big cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Atlanta, etc).

I bring it up because statistically the majority of big city residents tend to be liberal/Democrats while again, statistically the majority of suburb and rural residents tend to be conservatives/Republicans. If we go with popular vote every time, then the majority of election winners would be liberal/Democrats, which would cause the conservatives/Republicans to be under-represented in the political process.

For all intents and purposes, this country is a two party country. Yes there are other parties, but until they get more people voting in line with their beliefs, we will remain a two party country.

Back to the Electoral College vs the Popular Vote. Now I realize that many of the more liberal minded would say "So what? if the majority of the residents are liberal then we should have liberal leaders." The problem is that not all liberal leaders are good for the people who elected them. I'm not saying that conservatives are any better, but in order for the process to work we need to have at least two political parties to perform the checks and balances that we need to maintain. If we don't it's very likely that our country, our form of government and our way of life will fall apart. And that's very likely not going to be good for us citizens of the USA.

That all said, no matter what your feelings are towards politics and our current government, remember these two things:

1. It's better than a lot of the other options, and

2. The process we have allows each and every person who's a citizen and registered voter to participate in the process.

As long as you have the freedom to vote and you are allowed to participate in the process, then your life is much better than many other people in the world. That said, in the next election, please don't vote for whomever has the best soundbites, educate yourself and make good decisions on who gets your vote.

Good luck!

April fools!

You're going to love this. I had a really nice blog about single malt scotch all type up and I was going to change the font of the blog so I selected all the text in the edit box. Then I clicked the Font drop down and somehow all the selected text got deleted and then WHAM, autosave immediately auto saved a big box of nothing. So I guess the joke's on me.

Oh well! Anyway, hope your April Fools was a better one than mine. Bye!!!

Why haven't I posted????

Hey, post number two in an underwhelmingly small amount of posts. Nice, eh? Yeah, I figure you all don't want to read the dreck that lives in my mind (to be honest, some of it scares *me*) but that's okay, you're here, you're reading, I'm typing, the cycle goes on, right?

To be honest, there's much that I would love to blog, but in this day and age, anything you post in a public forum (and don't think that blogs aren't public, after all, you're reading this and you're not me, right?) immediately becomes part of your history, regardless of how old you were when you posted it.

It's like when a politician gets a ticket for driving drunk when they were 18, and they're running for office when they're 55. Someone will dig it up and use it as an example of what a horrible human being you are because of a mistake you made 37 years before.

Even if you never made that mistake ever again in your life.

The fact is that it's your history and it *will* follow you. The same holds true for blogging. Employers now do web searches on new potential employees to see if the new potential employee is "their" kind of people. And very qualified people have lost an opportunity at a very good, well fitting job because of some college hyjinks.

So because of that, what you get is a sanitized-for-my-own-safety spew of nonsense that truly is "of no consequence" to anyone. But hey, it does let me vent, backspace out what I vented, and then write what you end up reading.

It's sad that in this day and age people have become so overly sensitive to what others think, say or dig up and publish that we have to guard against the possibility that later it may be used against us, and so we have to edit ourselves to the point of bland existence. No thought provoking essays that make you contemplate your navel and do some soul searching to better yourselves and your world. Doesn't that really byte?

Just so you know, I did start ranting about something, but because this is a vanilla blog, you don't get to see it. You have to imagine what I might have gone off about. Yep, you have to use your imagination. If you know me, chances are you'll pick something close to what I was writing that got deleted. If you don't know me, then you'll just have to get to know me, at which point, your brain will also be filled with dreck that will scare you and others, but at least you'll have a fair idea of what I rant about and then delete. Aren't I a terrible person? :)

Right now American Idol is on {tape delayed three hours for the west coast}, it's the top ten (the ones who will all tour together regardless of who wins) and there are a few who I think will make it through to the finals. Carly, David A. and David C. rank high in my estimation of who will make it to the semi-finals. Every so often one of the other contestants do a killer song but they tend to not be consistent. Carly and the two Davids are more consistent with their performances and that's why I think those are the top three.

See? Nothing of consequence here, no world changing comments, no thought provoking statements. Nothing to make you think. Only words to mildly entertain you.

So with that, I take a deep bow, with flourishes, and bid you adieu until the next post.

P.S. I'm glad there's a spell checker but I can't believe "dreck" is not in it! Bye!!!

Tag, you're it!

I had to create an account and a blog page simply to post a comment on my friend's blog. Isn't that silly? Guess that makes me "it" in Google's eyes. Ah well, such is life. Good thing I laid in a good supply of batteries, eh? Looks like we can put pictures into these things too, so I'm going to try. Here goes!



Wow, it worked! Okay, so what's the picture you might ask? Well, I've lived in the Seattle area for 14 years now, and I'd never gone to see the New Years Eve fireworks. Since I won a spiffy Nikon D40X DSLR in August, I decided I was going to go take pictures of the Space Needle when the fireworks display was happening. I drove 25 miles, found a ledge along the interstate that faced the Space Needle, set up my tripod and camera and waited patiently. Finally midnight came and the show started.

Sort of...

Turns out that for the first time in 14 years, they had a malfunction with the firing computer. Did you catch that? 14 years. Exactly how long I've been living here. The one time, fireworks go poof instead of bang and it's the first time I went. Sort of makes one wonder, doesn't it? :)

Anyway, that's a reduced picture, if I manage to find the time, I've posted the full sized picture on flikr if you want to check it out.

Bye!!!